Eltel wins renewed order of 664,000 smart meters for Sweden

Nordic infrastructure and communications service provider Eltel has signed a new contract through its smart grids business in Sweden with Swedish DSO Vattenfall Eldistribution AB to install 664,000 new-generation smart electricity meters across the country in a contract valued at €51 million ($54.7 million).

The contract is an extension of a previous agreement signed between Eltel and the Swedish electric company in February 2020. Vattenfall Eldistribution AB has now decided to utilise the option to order the remaining phases of smart electricity meter installations.

The first order saw Eltel install 236,000 smart meters in a contract worth €22 million ($23.6 million). The scope of the project included planning, installation and logistics of new and old meters, as well as related infrastructure.

Throughout the entire project, Eltel will be installing a total of approximately 900,000 smart electricity meters and technology for about 40,000 secondary substations metering in Vattenfall's distribution network across Sweden.

According to Smart meters in Sweden – Lesson learned and new regulations, Sweden was one of the first countries in Europe to roll out smart meters. The first regulation regarding smart meters was adopted in 2003, which required monthly metering for small consumers and hourly metering for larger consumers by 2009.

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Neighbouring smart meter installations

Eltel’s announcement follows those coming from the likes of Norway and Finland.

Finland too was one of the first countries to introduce smart metering on a large scale. The latest in smart meter announcements came back in October 2022, when Vaasa Sähköverkko Oy (Vaasa Electricity Network) contracted Landis+Gyr for a 10-year rollout project.

More recently, the Norwegian Energy Regulatory Authority (NVE-RME) announced that almost 99% of metering points in Norway's low voltage distribution grid have a smart meter.

Planning for Norway’s smart meters began in the early 2000s and their deployment by the grid companies – of which there are over 140 – became a legal requirement in 2019. Three and a half years later, almost all of more than 2.3 million households now have a smart meter.